Rugby union usually struggles for media attention in the summer now that World Cups are reserved for the early autumn, but the BBC's lunchtime news today contained an item on the fake blood injury saga that has made Harlequins the talk of the game and earned Dean Richards a three-year ban.

Is a sport damaged by having its image tarnished? Certainly in the case of players or referees fixing matches, but the Harlequins affair was coated in farce, from the moment Tom Williams left the field towards the end of the Heineken Cup quarter-final against Leinster with the contents of a blood capsule spurting unnaturally from his mouth.

The affair became known as Bloodgate, fittingly because Watergate was less about the break-in at the Democratic party headquarters in Washington than the subsequent cover-up that cost Richard Nixon the presidency. Once a cover-up reaches the point where careers are put on the line, it invariably unravels.

And so it was with Harlequins when Williams was banned for a year last month for faking the blood injury and his club was fined £215,000, half of which was suspended for two years. The sanction on the player was disproportionate, but with no one admitting anything during the disciplinary hearing, it was the surest way of smoking out the truth.

Williams was not prepared to be the fall guy and when the appeal panel's judgment is published later this month it will show how far clubs in the professional era are prepared to go to win a match. Bloodgate was far from an isolated incident: how many times in Europe last season were matches blighted by uncontested scrums because sides ran out of props?

Were all the injuries genuine? How many occasions did a side with a dominant scrum end up running out of front-row forwards? If loopholes exist in regulations they will be exploited. Rugby union does not allow a player who has been replaced back on to the field (unless he is a front-rower) except in the event of a blood injury, which is deemed to be temporary.

It is a regulation that needs to be looked at because it encourages deception, just as in the old days when replacements were only allowed for someone who had been injured. What Harlequins did was against the rules – one in the eye for the organisers and the opponents, but not as dangerous as gouging.

An outpouring of sanctimony was always going to happen in a case such as this. What would have happened to Williams had he conned a penalty out of the referee at the end of the Leinster game and Quins had kicked it to win through to the semi-finals? Nothing, but he would have cheated just the same.

What would happen were there to be a repeat of the 1978 match between Wales and New Zealand in Cardiff when some of the All Black forwards, the night before a match, plotted how to win a penalty should they need one in the dying minutes? The moment duly arrived and the two second-rows, as rehearsed, dived out of a lineout two minutes from the end with their side trailing by two points. The kick was converted and Wales wailed.

Players break the rules in matches all the time, which is why there are so many penalties. Some offences are wilful, which is why the sin bin was created, and amount to cheating. Attempts are made to con referees, by collapsing scrums and mauls, and then there are incidents such as the one indulged in by Neil Back in a Heineken Cup final for Leicester against Munster when he illegally diverted a Munster scrum put-in with his hand.

Similarly with Harlequins. Some feel they should be thrown out of the Heineken Cup, others that Williams should not have had his ban reduced because obeying orders has not been regarded as an excuse down the ages. Whatever, rugby union is reaching out to a new audience and it is one which, judging by the column inches lavished on celebrities' antics, is more likely to be intrigued than appalled by deception and a cover-up.

Richards has been banned for three years partly because four other cases of his involvement in similar offences with Harlequins were mentioned in evidence. As they did not come under the jurisdiction of European Rugby Cup Ltd, they should have been ignored. Missing one season would have been ample punishment for a celebrated figure in the game who will now long be labelled a cheat. But as a player, Richards's will to win was always evident and he will probably rise again.